Slow Down, Oh Speeding Clock!

It’s almost suppertime here on the prairie. The day has hastened on, as days seem to. It’s Saturday and the municipal landfill (aka “dump”) was open, so we filled our car with garbage & recycling and hauled it all to the dump. Every farm and acreage must look after their own out here in the country.

I rode along with Bob just for the fun of it. 😉 The weather today has been intermittently sunny and overcast; as we drove the maybe-sixteen miles there and back I observed the sky full of lumpy clouds that seemed to bumble along. They have passed on and the sun came out.

Right now my half of our office looks rather shambolic — a new word I picked up over at Merriam-Webster. As you can guess, it comes from shambles and means “a great confusion or mess.” In reparation for hauling recycling to the dump, and just on the general principle of getting rid of clutter, my husband (a bookkeeper) went through a bunch of old records yesterday and piled them at my corner, next to the shredder. Last night and this morning I was shredding and filling garbage bags with paper recycling — to be made into who knows what? I got half done; the rest awaits my attention.

But back to the title of this post and the incident that sparked it. Have you noticed that the days, weeks, months go by WAY too fast. I decided a few days ago to just make my morning coffee instant. I checked the date, as I do once every blue moon, I discovered that the almost full jar of instant coffee, which I bought about six months ago, expired Feb 1st, 2019. When six months turns into a year and a half, is that not proof that time goes by WAY too fast?

Speaking of blue moons, and other heavenly times, are you planning to watch the solar eclipse on Sunday?

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning was CLOISTERED, which comes from cloister, a religious enclave, a place or state of seclusion, which comes from the Latin root verb, “to close.” Since I rarely make tea for myself, I’ve cloistered a number of misc. assorted teas up in a top cupboard. Waiting there for me to get the notion for a cup of tea, the leaves are likely returning to the dust from whence they came.

However, my jar of instant coffee is in the main traffic area, right by the cocoa mix and peanut butter. How could I have neglected it so long? Not to be wasteful, I’m now drinking a lot of instant coffee. After all, those grounds are good forever — or at least another six months.

I have to admit, though, that apart from the swift flight of time, my problems are small ones — for which I’m very thankful. I had a blood test last week Monday followed by a phone consultation with my oncologist on Thursday, and she says my blood counts are all perfect: she can’t see from my blood-work that I ever had leukemia. And that’s something to rejoice about!

So I’ll close with this little poem:

We thank Thee, Father, for the care
that did not come to try us,
the burden that we did not bear,
the trouble that passed by us,
the task we did not fail to do,
the hurt we did not cherish,
the friend who did not prove untrue,
the joy that did not perish.

We thank Thee for the blinding storm
that did not lose its swelling
and for the sudden blight of harm
that came not nigh our dwelling.
We thank thee for the dart un-sped,
the bitter word unspoken,
the grave unmade, the tear unshed,
the heart-tie still unbroken.